See, this is what happens when you elect Christofascists to positions of responsibility where they have little to no oversight. Gov. Kevin Stitt recently approved all of the “regulations put forward by Ryan Walters that included time for prayer in schools and expanded the state Education Department’s “foundational values” to acknowledge a “Creator” and the existence of good and evil,” so I guess he now feels he can do whatever he wants, including disregarding Oklahoma’s own statutes.
Ominously, all teachers are expected to adhere to the new policy. “Immediate and strict compliance is expected,” the memo noted. “Every teacher, every classroom in the state, will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom,” said Walters in his press briefing.
Source: NBC News
Oklahoma will require schools to teach the Bible and have a copy in every classroom, the state’s top education official announced Thursday.
Effective immediately, Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible as part of the curricula in grades five through 12, according to a memo Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters sent to all school districts. Schools are instructed to refer to the Bible and the Ten Commandments for their “substantial influence on our nation’s founders and the foundational principles of our Constitution.”
“Immediate and strict compliance is expected,” the memo noted.
Walters said at a state Board of Education meeting Thursday, “We’ll be teaching from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical understanding is there for every student in the state of Oklahoma.”
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit civil liberties group, said in a statement that Walters’ new Bible policy is “trampling the religious freedom of public school children and their families.”
“This is textbook Christian Nationalism: Walters is abusing the power of his public office to impose his religious beliefs on everyone else’s children,” Rachel Laser, the group’s CEO, said in the statement. Her organization is “ready to step in,” she wrote, though she stopped short of vowing legal action. The group has already sued to block a new Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools.
And the inevitable lawsuit that will be filed. They can cite Oklahoma Statute 70 OK Stat § 11-101 (2023) “No sectarian or religious doctrine shall be taught or inculcated in any of the public schools of this state, but nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the reading of the Holy Scriptures.”
